Getting More to Build Bigger

DarlaHS

Thanks for all the great answers on my question, thanks for being so patient with me. So, I want to go another direction in my questions. Please tell me if I need to be asking this in a different area of the forum. I own 2 large creative boxes, big ben skyline, architectural studio and I bout 5 pounds of Legos on ebay. Can anyone dirct me to what I should be looking to purchase next? My goal is to grow my Lego amount and to also have pieces necessary to build, i.e. a modular home or castle.
I am attending a BrickWorld convention this Saturday for the first time. Anything I should be looking for?

HugeYellowBrick

See something you like, and buy it.
If you want to build a big train, buy trains.
If you want to build a big house, buy houses.
If you want to build a big castle, buy castles. Rumour has it that a large Hogwarts Castle set is coming out in the summer.

milamber

If you are just looking to increase piece count then keep an eye out for open/damaged boxes, but with sealed bags on Ebay, Facebook, Gumtree etc. I've picked up several large sets for silly prices that way. I've found Destiny's Bounty 70618 and the Old Fishing Store 21310 very cheap recently and both have well over 2000 useful pieces.

ecmo47

Garage sales and Craigslist are good places to find quantities of brick at a decent price. Personally, I'd figure out what large MOC I want to build and then buy the pieces specific for that on Bricklink. So rough out your design on Lego Digital Designer first and create a parts list to buy from. As you buy parts for your build, browse the store for any other cheap parts you want to add to your general inventory.  Might as well make the most for the shipping costs. More advice. I'd avoid buying parts at Brickworld. Show prices are usually on the expensive side. I'm sure that they will have some of the dealers that sell parts by the cup and the large parts tables are fun to look through but not really a source for mass quantities. Not to bum you out, but until your parts collection hits the 100K+ mark, you won’t have most of the pieces you need for a specific build. Lego has a lot of different parts! Lastly, hook up with an active Lego Club. They have access to a Lego public relations program called "Lugbulk" that allows active member's to purchase cheap parts once a year in a mass order.

ecmo47

I see you're in Kentucky. Here is the type of Craigslist ad that you are looking for. 

https://lexington.craigslist.org/tag/d/lego-legos-120-lbs-lot-many/6524019345.html

Lot of great parts but $10.00 a pound is more than I would pay. This lot looks pretty clean of off-brand parts and other small toys but you can bet that it will not have very many of the minfigs.

PeteM

Also if you’re not worried about minifigures, search eBay for any large set number and “no minifigure” - I’ve got several large sets for better than half price this way...

milamber

PeteM said:

Also if you’re not worried about minifigures, search eBay for any large set number and “no minifigure” - I’ve got several large sets for better than half price this way...

I do it the other way about. Buy the sets as cheap as possible and use the minifigure sales to help pay for the set. Occasionally, if I'm very lucky, the rest of the set is more or less free.

DarlaHS

ecmo47 said:

I see you're in Kentucky. Here is the type of Craigslist ad that you are looking for. 

https://lexington.craigslist.org/tag/d/lego-legos-120-lbs-lot-many/6524019345.html

Lot of great parts but $10.00 a pound is more than I would pay. This lot looks pretty clean of off-brand parts and other small toys but you can bet that it will not have very many of the minfigs.

MorMore than I want to pay also.

Habitant99

The challenge is that Lego isn't cheap.  So you're stuck either accepting that a discount off of the typical price is going to get you some of what you want, or paying market rate for getting precisely what you want, and going from there.  It's a challenging hobby to do on the cheap.  You can definitely check thrift stores / Goodwill / weird eBay auctions, but often times you're going to have to decide how you want to build your collection and just commit to a budget to do so. 

For a long time I didn't want to buy preowned, so I would buy lots of broken-set unopened factory bags from a seller I knew, knowing that 9 times out of 10 I would get like, 85% of a set, but I'm not a minifigure guy so I would flip the figs if they were in the bags, then eithe reinvest in more lots or purchase specific parts from Bricklink or sets that I wanted enough to pay near full price for. 

madforLEGO

Even used LEGO is not always cheap, it depends where you live.